Tens of Thousands of US Emergency Workers Trained on How to Handle a Robotaxi (msn.com) 17
Last year Amazon's robotaxi service Zoox held a training session for 20 Las Vegas firefighters, police officers, and other first responders, reports the Washington Post, calling it "a new ritual for emergency workers across the country, as autonomous vehicles begin to spread beyond the handful of cities that served as initial testing grounds..."
Questions that came up included: What can first responders do if the nearly 6,000-pound vehicle is blocking a roadway? (Better to pull, not push.) What happens if the vehicle loses its connectivity? (It's designed to pull over.) And can first responders manually shut off the vehicle? (Not yet, but Zoox is working on it....) The vehicles' operators claim they drive more safely than humans, but anything can happen on public roads, and first responders need to know how to intervene if a robotaxi is caught in a collision that traps passengers, catches fire or gets caught doing something that demands a traffic stop...
Alphabet's Waymo, which has more than 2,000 vehicles completing hundreds of thousands of paid trips each week across San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta, has trained more than 20,000 first responders in how to interact with its vehicles, the company said. Tesla didn't respond to a request for comment on how many first responders the company has trained, but a representative from the Austin Police Department confirmed that fire, police and transit workers were trained on the company's Robotaxi before the company launched commercial service in June. Tesla, Waymo and Zoox say their vehicles can detect the lights and sirens of emergency vehicles and automatically attempt to pull over. Waymo says its vehicles can interpret first responders' hand signals....
The first responders appeared excited about the potential of the company's artificial intelligence technology to ferry visitors up and down the Vegas Strip without concern that a driver might be inebriated. They were also wary of problems that might unfold: Autonomous vehicles are electric, and when electric vehicles catch fire, they're difficult to extinguish, the firefighters said. The first responders also worried that a secondary air bag deployment could injure an emergency responder, a common concern with conventional vehicles. And if a police officer wanted to view the footage a Zoox vehicle captured on the road, would the company be willing to share it?
Turning over footage would require a subpoena, a Zoox official responded.
But "those who've been through the trainings and have seen large-scale commercial rollouts say it's difficult to anticipate all the potential issues in a specific market," the article points out.
Alphabet's Waymo, which has more than 2,000 vehicles completing hundreds of thousands of paid trips each week across San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta, has trained more than 20,000 first responders in how to interact with its vehicles, the company said. Tesla didn't respond to a request for comment on how many first responders the company has trained, but a representative from the Austin Police Department confirmed that fire, police and transit workers were trained on the company's Robotaxi before the company launched commercial service in June. Tesla, Waymo and Zoox say their vehicles can detect the lights and sirens of emergency vehicles and automatically attempt to pull over. Waymo says its vehicles can interpret first responders' hand signals....
The first responders appeared excited about the potential of the company's artificial intelligence technology to ferry visitors up and down the Vegas Strip without concern that a driver might be inebriated. They were also wary of problems that might unfold: Autonomous vehicles are electric, and when electric vehicles catch fire, they're difficult to extinguish, the firefighters said. The first responders also worried that a secondary air bag deployment could injure an emergency responder, a common concern with conventional vehicles. And if a police officer wanted to view the footage a Zoox vehicle captured on the road, would the company be willing to share it?
Turning over footage would require a subpoena, a Zoox official responded.
But "those who've been through the trainings and have seen large-scale commercial rollouts say it's difficult to anticipate all the potential issues in a specific market," the article points out.
- Darius Luttropp, former deputy chief of operations for the San Francisco Fire Department, told the Post last year that Waymo vehicles had blocked city firefighters from leaving and entering firehouses, and also crashed into their equipment.
- Lt. William White of the Austin Police Department told the Post that more than once Waymo vehicles failed to recognize an officer on a motorcycle with their police lights activated.
Not scalable (Score:4, Funny)
None of the Robotaxi-only car companies (Waymo, Zoox, etc.) will be around in three years. You can bookmark this comment and come back to it, then declare me Nostradamus reincarnated and offer me a blow job.
Te reason is, they won't be able to compete with car companies (specifically Tesla, but maybe by 2027 Benz too) that enable their car owners to be robotaxis.
enable their car owners to be robotaxis will end (Score:2)
enable their car owners to be robotaxis will end soon after an few bad accidents that end up makeing car companies have liability
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You realize the car has a camera in it right? Pam Bondi (US attorney general) has already said anyone who vandalizes a Tesla will be charged with terrorism (Reference: https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com] ). But if it does happen, the car owner will have to clean it up, you've seen the movie Taxi Driver with Robert De Niro right? I suspect that will end as soon as people find themselves doing 20 years for leaving a scratch on the car seat.
Waymos have been in operation in San Francisco and other places without
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I don't understand how this would work. Modern cars will be able to run as a robotaxi, but owners still need to add the car into a fleet. So fleet management companies can benefit, they just have to open to cars they don't own, like Uber did with their human-driven taxi service.
Also, who would buy an expensive (Tesla, Benz) car they need for the daily life, and leave it unattended with random people, at risk of coming back dirty or damaged, or not coming back at all?
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People with expensive cars use valet services all the time.
Re: Not scalable (Score:2)
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You're ready to give him a blowjob?
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Yeah but the thing is that even if these companies can match Waymo in 3 years that is likely only going to be on the latest model cars, I highly doubt any existing vehicle from a car company, especially Tesla, will have a full autonomous system to match that won't have some important changes to the model so maybe a model 2029 Mercedes can operate as a robotaxi there will only so many of those, meanwhile Waymo will have thousands of vehicles in potentially dozens of cities doing it 24/7 with dedicated infras
Only in... (Score:1)
caught doing something that demands a traffic stop
I'm not an American, but I can only presume the solution involves shooting out the tyres. #freedom
Cost (Score:1)
I hope the taxi companies are paying every penny of the trainee hourly pay and the other costs associated with this training.
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they just bill on rescue and don't pay for any damage to the car.